Margot wouldn’t buy that, though. This was her neighborhood, this was the street on which she’d grown up, and in her mind it was the same now as it had been then. She seemed to see this area through rose-colored glasses, her mind filling in niceties that were no longer there. The houses to either side of them were falling into disrepair, their small lawns little more than dirt patches dotted with weeds, their tenants an endless succession of increasingly trashy renters, but to Margot’s eyes they were simply the residences of her childhood friends with new owners.

Grimacing, Daniel held the shovel in front of him, walking through the backyard and out to the alley, where he deposited the cat in a garbage can. He was probably supposed to call the city and report this, have Animal Control come out and take care of the body, but he wanted to get rid of the cat as quickly and quietly as possible. He didn’t want to draw attention to what had happened. He didn’t want to give the perpetrators the satisfaction.

He glanced up and down the alley before walking back through the gate and was gratified to see nothing unusual, no strange shadows, nothing out of the ordinary. He returned the shovel to the garage and went inside the house, where Margot was finishing her orange juice and yelling for Tony to hurry up and brush his teeth, they had to go. He slipped a quick hand up her skirt, but she pulled away and shot him a look of annoyance.

“Why’re you up so early today?” she asked. “You don’t have an interview do you?”

“No.” He thought of telling her the truth, that he’d had a nightmare and couldn’t fall back asleep, that when he’d gone out to pick up the paper he’d found a dead cat in their front yard, but he didn’t want to worry her before she went off to work, and he said, “I was going to clean the house today. I thought I’d get an early start.”

She looked at him skeptically.

“It’s true!”

He was trapped now, he’d painted himself in a corner, so after Margot and Tony left, he swept and mopped, dusted and vacuumed, and it was past lunchtime before he finally finished. He slept most of the afternoon, dozing off during the hottest part of the day, and only a chance call from a phone solicitor woke him before it was time to pick up Tony.

Waiting in the parking lot of Tony’s school, the need to move struck him once again. School was not even out yet and there was a group of tough-looking boys smoking openly on the sidewalk in front of the administration building, all of them wearing white T-shirts and identically baggy pants. They were joined by two slutty-looking young girls dressed far too provocatively for their age.